Green Bay Packers long-forgotten goal post on display

A goal post believed to be from the team's original playing field, Hagemeister Park, stood in a remote area where Curly Lambeau and his teammates apparently abandoned it 80 years earlier.

Authenticating the artifact uncovered on Green Bay's east side would require a team effort, including some of the same scientists who studied the Titanic wreckage.

Even then, years would pass before most Packers fans would have a chance to see the rusted metal goal post. It remained in storage while officials with the Packers Hall of Fame struggled over how and where to present it.

But the artifact finally is on display inside Neville Public Museum of Brown County as part of a yearlong exhibition by the Packers Hall of Fame.

Tom Murphy, archivist for the hall of fame, said the somewhat-misshapen goal post offers a rare glimpse into the days when Lambeau and other pioneers were almost literally building the modern game of professional football from scratch.

"That's why it's such a classic piece," Murphy said. "It's seen a lot of history."

Hagemeister Park, located where East High School now sits, was the Packers' playing field from 1919 to 1923, when professional football in America was in its infancy.

After years of debate and research, the authenticity of the old goal post found standing in a field near East High School seems without question among those involved in the Packers Hall of Fame.

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Herman Reckelberg, a hall of fame board member, recalls seeing the white metal assemblage in the 1940s during his days as an East High football player. Reckelberg said he even might have used it to kick a few practice field goals, unaware of its place in Packers lore.

Now 86, Reckelberg has weighed all the evidence and is convinced that it was one of the Packers' first goal posts.

"If that goal post could talk," he said. Referring to Lambeau and other team founders, Reckelberg added, "I'm sure those guys all had something to do with it."

What is a bigger mystery to some observers is why the historic piece stood in plain sight for decades without anyone trying to salvage or preserve it.

Don Sipes, a longtime Packers fan and memorabilia collector, was doing historical research in 2007 when he decided to walk around where he thought Hagemeister Park had been. Among some history buffs, the precise location of the original playing field has been a matter of debate.

Sipes grew curious about an old metal goal post he noticed standing by itself in an empty field east of the high school. He calculated that a corresponding goal post on the opposite end of Hagemeister Park would have been located where the high school has stood since 1924.

To his astonishment, historical photos of the school under construction seemed to show the very same goal post in the background.

"It was there," he recalled saying to himself. "Over the generations, it just got lost."

Sipes, also a member of the Packers Hall of Fame board, obtained East High School's permission to remove the artifact in exchange for two new goal posts that were donated to the school by the hall of fame.

Randy Brice, another hall of fame board member, hiked out to the field with Sipes to cut down the metal goal post and load it onto a truck to transport back to the hall of fame offices near Lambeau Field.

Brice, whose grandparents watched games at Hagemeister Park, remembers the story of a 1922 game that the Packers won on a phantom field goal. The skies over Green Bay had gotten so dark that officials could not tell that Packers kicker Cub Buck had not yet even kicked the ball.

Once he got a look at the goal post Sipes had found, Brice was sure it was authentic.

"It was kind of exciting that we had stumbled onto that," he said. "I thought, 'That's got to be it. It's here.' "

Sipes, however, decided that a little more investigation was in order. So he snipped off a small piece of the goal post and sent it to a metallurgist. The expert in the physical and chemical behavior of metals and alloys was Russ Cochran, whose father, Red Cochran, was a Packers coach starting in the 1950s.

Russ Cochran, a metallurgical engineer in St. Louis, said tests showed that the material in the goal post dated to the 1920s or earlier. Just to be sure, he sent the sample to some university acquaintances who had done similar tests on the Titanic wreckage.

The results were the same: The metal in the goal post was from roughly the same period as the doomed ocean liner, which sank in 1912.

With the authenticity question seemingly resolved, the hall of fame set out to find a place to display its newest find. But the facilities available on the lower level at Lambeau Field did not offer enough space. So the goal post stood for seven years in a garage behind the hall of fame's offices.

Starting last month, renovations inside Lambeau Field forced the temporary relocation of the hall of fame to the Neville museum. That was when Sipes and his colleagues seized the opportunity to make room for their treasured piece.

The Hagemeister Park goal post now stands among the trophies, uniforms and other items to be displayed in the downtown museum for approximately the next year. For about $400, fans also can purchase a piece of scrap metal from the goal post mounted on a commemorative plaque.

Beth Lemke, the museum's interim executive director, said she finds the goal post particularly interesting, because it was built by hand and because it reflects a time when visionaries in Green Bay were assembling a game that the community -- and the nation -- would come to love.

"That's the story that's exciting," Lemke said. "It was created by the people who were creating and shaping football as we know it today."

Sipes hopes the goal post will remain on display after the Neville museum exhibit closes and the hall of fame collection returns to Lambeau Field.

For now, however, he is just enjoying seeing his contribution admired and appreciated, finally, by his fellow Packers fans.

"This is the birth of the Packers," he said. "It's a piece of history for the community."